


Drabble Collection - Claymore

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Dark, Drabble Collection, F/F, Female Characters, Gen, Gen Fic, Sisters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 4,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Claymore drabbles and ficlets under 500 words, largely gen at the moment, may contain spoilers up through the most recent manga chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Valley to Walk (Miria)

Miria lights one candle for memory, another in prayer. Old, familiar names crowd close around the tiny flames – little, insubstantial things, rustling like moths or spirits in the smoke. She ought to know, by now, what to offer them. She's half a ghost herself, after all, and she ought to understand something of the dead. But all she knows is this cathedral stillness closing in around her, the darkness waiting in the corners.

_I haven't forgotten. I won't forget._

And Miria is not one for believing – not without cause, not without reason, because belief never comes without price. She puts her faith in what she can see and what she can sense, and even as a child, she asked too many questions. It seems to her now that the god of Rabona is just one more question without an answer, and she has not forgotten how these priests flinch when her soldiers pass them in the hallways, or failed to notice the signs of warding they make. But there is candlewax spilling onto the altar cloth, redder than blood has ever been, and when the others return they will find her gone, and if they see her again, it will be with human blood bright on her hands. That much she can promise, and that much she understands: she will tear the Organization from its foundations, and she will do it alone.

Until then –

 _Keep them safe,_ she whispers.

If there is anything listening, it holds its peace. If there is anything listening, she knows not to trust it. But there are rituals, even so, there are promises and there are prayers, and it doesn't matter in the end – not to their kind, already forsaken – whether there is anything listening or not.

Miria leaves without looking back, and leaves only incense and ash behind her.


	2. Patience (Ilena)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I use the name Ilena for Irene/Elena (It's what she was called in the manga translation I read, and it's what I'm used to)

Ilena sits straight-backed, head bowed, her remaining hand curled loosely on her knee as she breathes out tension and breathes in calm. The lake waters lap against the rocks in gentle waves, and light plays on the surface, a bright and glancing reflection that reveals nothing of the depths beneath. There's absolution here, in this stillness, among these reeds and rushes. She knows, as a hunter knows, that if she's still enough herself, patient enough, she'll be able to catch it.

It does not seem to her relevant to consider that what she catches, her first instinct is to kill.


	3. Similitude (Ophelia)

The girl is different from anyone Ophelia can remember seeing before. 

She looks like a warrior, but the aura is wrong, the power in it, the scent that hangs about her like old blood. It takes a second to place it, but when Ophelia does, she _knows_. And she hasn't wanted to hurt anyone for a long time as much as she wants to hurt this traitor-monster-bitch they've sent her, this _thing_ in human skin. They can look like warriors when they want to. Ophelia knows that too, and knows it too well.

She's going to make this one suffer.


	4. Guardian (Galatea)

Galatea holds fast to her duty, right up until the day when she doesn't.

After that, there is Rabona, which is duty of a different kind, for the first time chosen willing. She relearns the words to prayers only half-remembered, never quite believed, teaches herself to move like a woman who knows nothing of killing and walks restlessly through gardens on days when there is nothing for her but waiting.

Her ears catch the clash of steel on steel in the barracks yard, familiar enough to be almost a comfort in this foreign place, and she stops to listen, presses her hand against the rough wall and feels herself held there, grounded.

She wishes it were possible to train these guards to fight a warrior and win, or an awakened being, with nothing but strength and will and blade. There is an unfairness to it, an imbalance that rankles. All they have is numbers, and discipline. All they can do is die.

But that will not happen. She will not let it happen.

This is her city. She will do whatever is necessary to see that it is safe.


	5. Sojourn (Ilena)

Ilena stands, sunlight on her face, looking eastward.

She left the garden well-tended, neat rows of turned earth – a tiny patch of human presence, waiting for the woods to reclaim it. Ilena imagines her house turned wilderness, still standing, vines run rampant along the walls. There are worse legacies a woman could leave. It's good to know there's one thing in this world she built instead of burying.

It's east they'll come from, and she'll sense them when they do. And Clare is going west, and knows how to hide, which means maybe –

 _Maybe two things,_ she thinks, and smiles.


	6. A Proverb (Miria)

In the months following Hilda's death, Miria trains twice daily, morning and night. She hones her body like she hones the edge of her blade, implacably, without pity. But what Hilda taught her, that one last brutal lesson, is this: her body is not a blade. A sword does not crave blood, only spills it at the wielder's behest. A blade will not betray her.

In the Organization's stronghold she sifts through restricted records in storerooms thick with cobwebs and dust, tracing over the proof of everything she has feared and always half suspected. She keeps her head low, listens without speaking, watches without acting. And she obeys, always, like a faithful dog called to heel.

Men with black cloaks and smiling faces pass her in the halls, unconcerned with her presence. They would tell her, if she ever asked, that the only difference between a dog and a wolf is one good meal. They would be wrong.

Miria salutes as they pass, and lets them go, reminds herself each time of patience. She doesn't spit in the wake of their receding footsteps, doesn't curse their shadows, does not let herself consider what it would be like – how easy it would be – she doesn't let herself think on any of that.

She doesn't forget, either.

The difference between a dog and a wolf, Miria knows, is whether the creature has been given reason to trust humans at all.


	7. Transmutations (Alicia and Beth)

Theirs is a life constrained, all awareness pared down to the killing edge of a blade. They know their designations and their purpose, and they know constancy – in the walls delineating their world, the flow of time and the presence of one who is more _self_ than _other_.

Acceptable behavior must be maintained, unacceptable behavior suppressed. But they know, too, that some things are stronger than protocol, more essential than orders. The safety of the other, who is self – the other-self's pain, or injury – these supersede all.

It is not defiance. They are incapable of defiance. It is only truth.

*

When they fight, it with efficiency, savage impulsion leashed and bound to will. It is good to fulfill their purpose. They know this. Battle is sweeter than pure water, cold air, the wind on their faces when they are permitted outside. 

Those who command them say it is delicate, the moment of returning, as if will is frayed and violence ascendant. What their keepers do not realize is that it is always so – delicate, a balance maintained, unlawful impulses to be quelled. Things do not vanish when not observed. Things that are changed remain so, until they are changed again.

*

Alicia is the stronger half of them, the more terrible creature. It has always been so, as long as they can remember. There is a reason why it is she that is the sword, and designation Beth the one that wields it. It is Alicia whose dreams are red, iron-scented, and it is Beth who cradles her sleeping, fingers tangled in her hair, dreaming those dreams from the outside in. There is the weapon and the wielder, but they are not so separate as that.

Designation Alicia dreams of blood. What designation Beth dreams of, no one has ever asked.


	8. Awakening (Unnamed original character)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written a while back as a commentfic and never really posted anywhere. Also possibly the darkest thing I've written yet.

Your last clear memory is the sound of your captain screaming.

No. You shake your head, confused, thoughts half-forming and dispersing before you can catch them. When you look down, your hands don't look like your hands anymore. Your skin is bladed and bone-plated, and you lift your arm in front of your face, feeling the stretch of muscle and sinew as you curl and uncurl your fingers, trying to think.

Your last clear memory is the moment your captain _stopped_ screaming. After that, though, it gets blurred, red-tinged. You remember fighting. You remember that the others are dead already, except for you and your captain, who is dying, and you remember your throat raw from panic and thick with the taste of your own blood as you realize that you can't let it happen. You can't let anyone else die.

You don't know what happened to your captain. That bothers you, a little. You think she's alive, because you remember tearing apart the monster that had her pinned beneath its claws, but that's the last thing you can remember, and – 

You think she's alive. But you don't _know_.

You'd ask someone, but all the people here are dead. You can see them scattered face-down in the streets, like they tried to run, and you can smell blood, old blood spilled and stale, and the charnel scent of meat. It's funny. There's something about that, all these people, but you can't remember what. Maybe you're back home again, and the yoma got them. You hope not. You don't want to be back there.

No. You need to think. You know where you are, and it isn't home, but you don't want to be here either. 

You stand unsteadily on legs that aren't quite the legs you remember, and walk through the wreckage of thatch-roofed cottages, stone walls fallen and beams snapped and tossed like twigs around you. Something bad happened here. You don't think you're going to find any survivors.

That's alright, though. There's another village up the road, not too far away. You've been there before, and even though you're a witch, a slayer, they never treated you badly. They might be able to tell you what happened to your captain.

And besides. It's been a long time since you can last remember being so hungry.


	9. Depths (Miria/Hilda)

Miria bows her head and closes her eyes, lets the past overtake her. For a moment in her mind, she is standing on a promontory overlooking jagged rocks, and the ocean is below her, filling the air with thunder. She is young, in this memory. Newly certified, barely tested in true combat, and this is the first time she has ever seen anything so vast or so boundless. She crouches down, crumbles black earth absently between her fingers – not quite in awe, not quite afraid, but still there is an unfamiliar catch in her throat at the thought of it, this place a world apart from the dry stone and order of the Organization's stronghold.

She is young, and there is another beside her, Hilda, who is fiercer and brighter, more dangerous, Hilda who has always been stronger. And Hilda laughing, the sound of it startling after a lifetime of so much silence, her face lifted to the wind as she throws an arm around Miria's shoulders – _Take a look, 17. Have you ever seen the like?_

 _Never_ , she had said then, and it had been the truth. Now, she's seen oceans and oceans, dreamed fitfully of other lands on other shores, and it's been a long time since she's been so innocent, so young. But even now, in the heart of the north, she remembers salt in her hair and the weight of Hilda's arms around her, the glint of sunlight on water and the dark and silence beneath.


	10. Passing Time (The Twin Trainees)

The first sensation you remember, as more than blurred impression, is sun on your face.

 _This is sun,_ you remember thinking, in words. You don't know where those words came from, only that when you hold your hand to the light, turn it over, watching shadows move across your skin, they are there: this is sun. That means something.

You cross the room to stand beside yourself, and the weight of your hand in your hand is an anchor, proximity the only comfort you know. You look out the window, restive, waiting, watching light and long shadows on bare ground.

*

You did not know then that things could change, but they have.

After the battle, there had been grief and celebration – each as grim and wild in its way as the other, no separation between them. Now, last night's campfires have burned down to cinders in the half-light of morning, and the sky is changing from dark to blue. You are not tired. You are untethered, and nothing is how you are used to it being, and the air beyond the mountains is alight with tattered shreds of red and gold, pink and violet.

This is sun. It means something.


	11. Ghosts (Rafaela and Luciela)

Luciela was easy to like. Everyone who knew her remembers that.

Things came easily to her – strength, swordsmanship, wit, friendship. Anything she wanted, whatever she set her mind to, all of it seemed to fall into her hands like there was never any question she deserved it. She took the admiration of others as her due, and offered only an impish smile in return. No one ever held it against her, though, not Luci. You couldn't stay mad at her. She was always the bright one, the rising star, and Rafaela the quiet, serious one running along behind, struggling to keep up.

But what Rafaela remembers these days, when the mood takes her unexpectedly, is not Luciela's shadow long across the ground, not the sting of being the slow one, always second place. It's being young and falling, the shock of impact and abrasion, and it's looking up to see her sister turning back, holding out a hand to help her to her feet.

*

Other times, less often, the scene in her mind is a room late at night, a window open to the desert air, linen curtains drifting like ghosts in the breeze and the sharpness of fear in the back of her throat, unacknowledged. Luciela is pacing, one wall to the next, one even footstep after the other, and Rafaela, so attuned to her emotions of late, does not know what to do to quiet her.

“If this fails,” Rafaela remembers her saying. “If something goes wrong tomorrow.”

“Nothing will go wrong.”

“If it does. It'll be me hurting people, you know?”

And Rafaela standing to catch her as she comes back around, stilling her with hands on shoulders, wishing she could keep her sister's worry the way she keeps her sister's soul.

“No,” she says. “It won't be you.”

*

Many years later, Rafaela sees a girl in the forest with a smile like the one she remembers. It hurts less than she's expecting, but scares her more than she knows how to say.


	12. More Mercy Than I (Ophelia)

Ophelia lets herself fall, and the lake rushes up to claim her.

It's almost easy - just floating there, letting the armored shell of her body fall to pieces around her, leaving only her human self. Her hair slips free of its braid and drifts around her, twining with waterweed, and the water is cool against her skin. Without the scales and plates to hold her, she can feel herself falling away.

She's dying, she thinks. It isn't as terrible as she'd always imagined it must be. There's pain, but she's used to pain, and regret, but she's used to that too. And she's lighter now, without the promises resting on her shoulders, without the hunger or the weight of a blade on her back. She opens her eyes to murky dimness and light refracting on the surface, and as much as she finds herself losing down here, as many lives as she's offered up to sate her own fears and her rages, she never imagined death would give her anything back. But there it is, amid the silt and the rushes: the truth of things, the way it all ended.

She'd forgotten. For so long, she'd forgotten, and thought she was missing nothing but the blood of others. But she remembers now, and it isn't false or hollow, and she isn't missing anything any longer.

Her brother's smile. It isn't weakness. It never was.

Ophelia looks up into sunlight on the water's surface, and closes her eyes one last time.


	13. Seen, Not Heard (Roxanne)

Roxanne knows what happens to little girls that nobody wants.

She knows because Auntie told her, on the day she went to live in the big house with the white pillars, after her parents died. It's charity, Auntie told her, a kindness, taking in another mouth to feed, one more burden.

She remembers dropping a stack of dishes, blue ceramic in jagged pieces across the floor and the burn of panic in her throat as she scrabbled to pick them up, fit them back together, and realized that she couldn't. And she remembers ribbons that never looked right, scuffed shoes, torn lace, dirty nails, imperfections - _Stand up straight, girl. Wipe that mud off your face. What are you, a heathen?_

 _I'll be good,_ she remembers saying, _I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I promise I'll be good._ And she had tried, but she wasn't, and so they had to give her away.

And she knows that you always have to watch what you're doing, that you have to keep quiet, and listen, and learn. Those are the rules, and Roxanne knows that she has to follow the rules, no matter what. Because she has to be good. Because if she isn't good, they won't want her anymore, and then she doesn't know what will happen.

But there's something about her that Auntie never considered, and the men in black don't think about at all. She's not a girl anymore. She's not a pretty thing with lace at her collar, or a brat with scabs on her knees. She's a demon.

And one of these days, she's going to make sure everybody knows it.


	14. Elegance (Hysteria)

Every morning, Hysteria spends an hour - precisely that, no more, no less - combing out her hair in front of the mirror, weaving it into a hundred tiny, perfect braids and pinning each braid in place, precisely where it belongs.

It won't stay like that, of course. Only a child or an idiot expects something perfect to last through the disarray of battle, and as bothersome as it is, she never permits it to unbalance her. But it's hardly an excuse for slackness, either, because perfection, elegance... surely these must be things to strive for, no matter that they cannot be sustained. And it's important to take care of yourself, Hysteria knows. After all, it isn't as if anyone else in the world will do it for you.

Every morning, she combs out her hair and braids it, paints her lips and shades her cheekbones with colors she bought for more money than she's sure Organization cares to spare for even their greatest. When she moves through a crowd she feels the eyes of others on her, and she knows that she deserves her place as Number One. She's proud of it - not just her hair or her face, but the way she walks, the way she fights, every motion precisely placed and light enough to look effortless. And if sometimes her rank isn't enough to silence the small voice in the back of her mind that whispers that first among monsters is little enough to be proud of, she knows she doesn't have to listen. Because as long as they _see_ her - as long as it's awe in their eyes, and envy - she knows she must have something of value in her, some kind of grace.

Sometimes, Hysteria isn't sure what frightens her more: the thought of anyone seeing her vulnerable, or the thought of not being seen at all.


	15. Together (Cassandra & Number 35)

Cassandra wakes to the sound of a campfire crackling not far away and the mingled smells of cooking fish, smoke, and forest, all of it familiar but somehow, this morning, not quite the same. She's wrapped in her cloak, curled up with her knees tucked against her stomach, and the light through the trees is bright on her face, pulling her slowly back to full alertness.

It takes a moment of sun-warmed lassitude before the memory unburies itself: the losing fight, the shame of her shitty, ugly technique, the stranger throwing her arms around her and crying - not from fear this time, but from gratitude. And then the mission had been over and the stranger hadn't left, and now Cassandra doesn't know what to say to her. She never does. But she has to say something, so she sits up, brushing leaves from her hair and feeling foolish, and says, "it must be midmorning by now. If you're not careful, I'm going to turn lazy on you."

Her companion laughs - a cheerful sound, not unlike the noise of the stream she can hear running somewhere close - and says, "you seemed tired. Thought it was best to let you rest."

"It's been a while since I had anyone to take second watch," Cassandra says. "I felt - " _Safe,_ she realizes. _I felt safe._ She still does.

It seems a dangerous thing to accept too quickly, after the last person she trusted to watch her back, but here and now, it's not so easy to keep that in mind.

"Come on," the stranger says, still smiling, not such a stranger anymore. "Have some breakfast. There's time yet before we have to be on the road."

Cassandra moves closer to the fire, feeling clumsy still, mulling over the sound of that word, _we._ It's a startling concept, or perhaps just impossible to apply to herself, but all the same... despite the doubt, the sudden tightness in her chest, she thinks she's going to have to get used to it.

And it's true, what her new companion is saying. There's a few hours before they have to worry about anything except breakfast, and even the thought of packing up, turning to the next mission, and the next, doesn't feel like the burden it once had. 

It's foolish to imagine that it will last, and Cassandra has no doubt of that. But for the first time in a long while, the road ahead doesn't seem empty.


	16. Animal Life (The Twin Trainees and Miata)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And surging at the blood's perimeter  
>  The half-remembered wild interior  
> Of an animal life_  
> \- Shearwater, Animal Joy

In some ways, Miata confuses them.

There's nothing calm about her. She storms and rages and frets, smiles without warning or reason - unpredictable, volatile.

In some ways, Miata does not confuse them at all.

Galatea believes - though she never says it - that they understand the snarling beast in her better than the girl. Perhaps so. They certainly recognize it. But what they remember - comprehension irrelevant - is encountering her unexpected, sitting quiet on a tower room and watching a sparrow build its nest outside the window.

"It's pretty," she says, without turning to look at them.

They have never heard anybody say such a thing of sparrows before, only brightly-colored fragile things, butterflies or dragonflies or the kind of flowers that die in harsher climes. Impracticalities. But pretty or not, Galatea would say, no life is impractical - however fragile, however small.

It's something they must take care to remember, like a song or an equation, a curious new thing to learn. This is how life works: the girl with her hands pressed to the glass and the creature outside it, acting on instinct to craft itself a home. Then the bird takes flight and the light hits its wings, revealing gradations of light and shadow, soft grays and browns; Miata turns to watch it fly, and all the details shift and rearrange themselves unbidden.

An indrawn breath, an instant, and then that little life is gone, leaving nothing but sun on stone.

It's the first time they understand what pretty means.


	17. Breaking the Yearlings (Miria/Hilda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The weather holds until it's on you  
>  And then suddenly breaks_  
> \- Shearwater, Breaking the Yearlings

It's a hot day. Dust on the wind, carried in from open desert, but Miria can smell the storm gathering overhead. Rain, she hopes. Hasn't rained here since summer started, never really does, and by the time the end of the season comes around, even the air is oppressive.

She doesn't mind it, though, returning here, even with the memories this place brings. Not when it means she's back by Hilda's side.

They leave tomorrow by the same road, at least until their ways part. Today, there's time to sit outside, waiting for the rain to fall and reveling in the lightning-charged air. Time to share stories from the places they've been, to laugh and not think about leaving.

"It won't be for long," Hilda says.

"No," Miria says, "but I'll still miss you."

Silence hangs between them for a moment, precarious, before Hilda pulls her into a fierce hug and whispers, "don't."

"Don't?"

"Don't miss me," she says. "When I'm gone."

There's a trace of agitation in her voice, her aura - something subtly wrong, and Miria almost asks. Then Hilda falls back to watch electricity arc across the sky, smiling the same easy smile Miria remembers from their training days, and she's sure she must have imagined it.

"I won't," she says. "Promise."

She stretches out on the dry ground beside Hilda, close, not quite touching; thunder shakes the sky, and a few drops of rain begin to fall.


	18. Choices (Miria)

When you step out into sunlight, carrying Rimuto's head in one hand and your sword in the other, you can almost feel the hush of expectancy fall over the dry valley and the army gathered there. It sweeps over you like wind or water, and sweeps you along with it. It feels unreal. You lift the thing you're holding into the light, and it seems to weigh nothing in your hand, less than nothing. Death should be heavier, you think, but you look down at the upturned faces – the wounded and the weary, alive, unbroken – and you see it for what it is: a burden lifted. 

A cheer goes up from the crowd below, first quiet and then gathering force, half a hundred voices raised in celebration and defiance. What you hear in that echoing sound lightens your heart – not blood-thirst, simply the relief of soldiers after a long battle, certain now that it's over.

It isn't over. You know that, and despite the resounding joy in that victory shout, you think some of them do too.

One more enemy to face or fall before, one more ghost to call back to the living. And after that battle, if you survive it... you realize, with a shock of something close to fear, that if you win that fight, there won't be anything left in this land that can stop you.

No more careful balances, then. This is where you decide what to be, all of you, here, today.

You think of a tyrant's corpse, left where it had fallen in a basement laboratory, surrounded by the shattered pieces of chains strong enough to hold down a creature whose existence you can still hardly comprehend. You didn't need to take his head. Almost any other method of execution would have sufficed. But that's what you do with monsters, to prove they won't be coming back, and it's not what monsters do to humans. Right now, with his blood still drying on your hands, both those things seem important.

There are choices that will need making, not yet but _soon_ , and you don't know which are the right ones, or whether you have the strength to make them. But you think of Hilda's blade, still standing where you left it on a nameless mountainside, and you make a silent pledge.

The monster is _gone_. It won't be coming back.


	19. Beauty (Galatea)

The paints she wears are such human things, the men of the Organization say, worthless in the wilderness where there are none to observe her.

And Galatea laughs, and says only, "do you think humans are the only creatures in nature to adorn themselves?" There are other instincts, after all, than fear and rage and hunger.

She says it, but in truth, it isn't the peacock's plumage she thinks of, tracing her eyes with kohl, or the monarch's patterned wings when she dabs her lips with crimson.

Such human things, yes - and she would rather her other face be hidden.


End file.
